The official position
In spite of some shy and isolated signs of opening in the late past, the intransigent position of the Catholic Church in condom matter doesn’t change: Their use is illicit as a way to avoid unwelcome pregnancies and as an instrument of prevention of the sexually transmitted diseases. The reasons of a so obstinate opposition have to be researched in the ancient dictate according to which the union between body and spirit must be fulfilled inside the marriage sacrament and only with the aim of procreation. In other terms the sexual intercourse is allowed only after marriage and only if it is oriented to the conception of children.
From Paul VI to John Paul II
The Vatican anti-condom campaign took place in the days of Paul VI, the Pope that, through the encyclical Humanae Vitae in 1968, as first said no to the use of condom that in that days was only a contraceptive method (the preventive function towards Aids emerged only after many years). This happened in spite of the opinion of the commission charged to study the question, that with the majority of its member voted the liberalization of contraceptives.
A clean turnabout would have been possible at the hands of John Paul I, that on several occasion had expressed the intention to legitimize the themes of the responsible fatherhood and recourse to the contraceptives. Eloquent was the item pronounced by him during a conference on married love and family education, organized two months before the Humanae Vitae came to light, when he was still a bishop: «We hope that the Pope can give a liberator word». The sudden death (suspect for some people) which stroke him after only 33 days of pontificate prevented Pope Luciani to carry on the renewal wished by many couples.
So the ultraconservative line of Paul VI got the upper hand followed by John Paul II too, that declared himself always contrary to the use of artificial methods of birth control to face the overpopulation problem. In the encyclical Sollicitudo rei socialis in the 1987 Karol Wojtyla defined worrying the fact that many nations tried to reduce the nativity tax, contradicting not only their religious identity but the very nature of their development too. Neither the Aids epidemic burst in the 80’s induced the Polish Pope to show him more indulgent towards condom. These words spent on this matter in 2005 by him: «It is necessary to fight the disease in a responsible way», or «increasing the prevention, above all through the education of the holy value of life and the formation to a correct practice of the sexuality, which assumes chastity and fidelity».
Benedict’s XVI thought
The rise to the apostolic throne by Joseph Ratzinger, already prefect of the Congregation for the doctrine of the faith (the body charged to watch over the purity of the ecclesiastic teaching) under John Paul II, it has not made other that to strengthen the Vatican condemnation of the condom. “The German shepherd”, as the Italian left-wing daily newspaper Il manifesto has defined him, gets things straight immediately with the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, where the censure of any sexual practice «which has the aim of avoid procreation» finds confirmation.
And as far as the strategy to use in the fight against Aids? Well, Benedict XVI chose the 1st December 2005, no less, it is worth to say the XVIII World Aids Day to reassert what must be the weapons to face the disease: «moderation, fidelity in the marriage, education, poor care». Neither a mention on the use of condom, which continues to be not considered neither as instruments of health prevention.
On the rest the ideas of the current Holy Father were well-known by everyone since he was cardinal. Times in which he released declaration like this: «Find a solution for the problem of infection promoting the use of condom would mean to undertake a walk not only insufficiently reliable from the technical point of view, but also and above all unacceptable from the ethical point of view. Such proposal of a “safe” sex or “safer”, as they say, ignores the real cause of the problem, that is the permissiveness that, in the sexual sphere, corrodes the moral fibre of people».
The condom dossier
It took the publication of the last data on the Aids spread, to persuade Catholic Church to reconsider its behaviour. 40 million people infected in the world, 4,3 million of new infection and 2,9 million of death people registered only in 2006. This is the photo of a tragedy that, according to the valuation of the Who (World Health Organization), it will carry an individual on three to die before the age of thirty in 2010. In front of so glaring numbers Ratzinger makes up is mind to stimulate a new reflection and he orders to Papal Council for the Pastoral of the Health a in-depth study about the opportunity of a moderate permissiveness in theme of condoms (for example approving its use in the intercourses between husband and wife when one of the two is seropositive).
«It is a matter of establishing if some exceptions for new events like the Aids emergency could be compatible with the ethical principles». This is what emerges from the Curia during the presentation of the dossier, almost two hundred pages written with the help of theologians and scientists and still under exam by the Congregation for the doctrine of the faith. Passing over the doubtful expression “new events”, used in connection with a reality that everyone know since the far 1981 (the year that signs officially the beginning of the epidemic), many doubts remain on the effective possibility that the Holy See paves the way, even if partially, to the use of condom.
Doubts confirmed by the specifications that the cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, president of the Vatican health ministry, wanted to report at the end of the work: «The condom dossier as Aids prevention medium doesn’t question the traditional condemn of the sexual libertinism and every pre-marriage intercourse, in particular the homosexual one». Not to mention the visit in Brazil made by Benedict XVI the last May. This visit had to build the occasion to restore the dialogue with a community that, even if in large majority Catholic, suffers the prohibitionism of the Church in matter of condom. This visit was in the end a failure seeing that the Pope only recommended the maximum caution on the sexual themes to the president Lula that said nothing, only announced the intention to put on the market 50 million of condoms with 90% of discount.
In short, although the preparation of the famous dossier represents a commendable attempt to put again in discussion convictions by now old of four decades, there is no need to have not too much illusion about this. The risk is or rather that to have to brush up the effective similitude coined in June 2006 by the reverend James Keenan, teacher of ethic at the Boston College: «The Vatican is like a submarine. It lifted its periscope, it took a look around and then it went under the sea again».
The debate with the lay community
Except future, sensational reconsiderations, we are at the beginning: doesn’t exit any case in which the Catholic Church admits the use of condom, neither between a man and a woman not married neither between two men, since it is a matter of relationships equally condemnable. This position provoked strong reactions from whom, inside the lay community, thinks that it contributes to Aids spread. Above all in Africa, where the victims of the disease are very numerous (about 500 in a day) and the influence of Vatican is anything but marginal. We can’t imagine the controversies when the ecclesiastic authorities, in the February 2006, opposed themselves to the construction of a condom factory in Kenya for fear that this could encourage “immorality and promiscuity”.
Common people criticism
The thing that many have reproached to the Holy See is the pretence to abstract an ethic principle from the social contest, leaving millions of people unprotected in front of Hiv virus. But there is who expressed his ideas in a strong way, accusing the Church to have “a strict and inhuman position”, above all when forbids the use of condom in the intercourses between husband and wife when one of the two is seropositive. It is the case, for example, of a reader of Famiglia Cristiana, who in January 2001 wrote to the Catholic weekly magazine a letter with a not friendly tone.
Original, in order not to say twisted, the magazine reply, left to the pen of the well-known theologian Giordano Muraro. This last one said yes to condom if one in the couple is infected by Hiv, but on condition that the couple uses it only during the non-fertile period. A concession that father Muraro explained in this way: «For spouses that for serious reasons think not to procreate the Church proposes to have private intercourses when the capability to procreate is not present…For the same reason we think that is allowed to spouses at risk of infection to use condom in times where the privacy doesn’t have procreative power». In this way, in fact, «The instruments that is used like a barrier isn’t a contraceptive because doesn’t forbid the conception, but a condom, that is an instrument that preserve from infection».
In short, according to the theologian, «the principle of unlawfulness of condom remains unchanged, but changes the way to use it for the variation of the case to which it must be applied». And again: «It is a duty of the spouses with infection problems to characterize, through natural methods, the non-fertile period. When they characterize it, they can use condom to live the gesture of privacy as a pleasant one which helps them to grow in the communion to become more and more two in one single life».
If the defence of Muraro is passed through a shy, circumstantial opening to the use of condoms, it cannot be said equally, on the contrary, for that one of Monsignor Javier Lozano Barragan, president of the Papal Council for the Pastoral of the Health. In answer of the new wave of critics followed by the publication of the worrying data about the 2001 Aids epidemic, the ministry head burnst out: «They accuse us to kill, but only a pansexual society like ours, able to think only to the principle of well-being in the sustainable development, can judge ridiculous and troublesome the sixth Commandment gave by God to Moses, and common to the Christian and Jewish tradition, to not to commit adultery». All that to reassert the same concept: «The name of prevention is chastity».
The appeal of Veltroni
Also from the Italian political world rose voices of dissent against the Catholic prohibitionism. In February 2000 the current roman major Walter Veltroni turned an appeal to the Church in order that it could modify its very beliefs on contraception. An appeal came from the heart, considering that the then DS secretary was in Soweto (South Africa), where touched the tragedy of the widespread AIDS. But the ecclesiastic surroundings, haven’t appreciate it and Veltroni had to swallow the telling-off of Monsignor Elio Sgreccia, Vatican plenipotentiary on ethical and biological matters: «It is a lack of respect towards the Pope…Condoms are distributed in Africa from the government and international organizations, but it had no use. Push on condom remains for this reason a misleading pedagogical line and it ends to become a deception».
Evener, but however inflexible, the recall to Veltroni himself that the expert Jaques Suaudeau gave to the pages of L’osservatore Romano in date 5 April 2000: «For a person who is found to state the horrible reality of Aids in Africa with his very eyes the shock is strong and the ensuing outraged reaction is natural. A guilty of this situation is attempted, but it is ended in order to accuse just those people that, even if in a not perfect way, pledge concretely to find a remedy, while the others are pleased to criticize». And how the Church is engaged in defeating this scourge? «Not with simple containment actions ― wrote Suaudeau ― but through a prevention which goes to the human root of the problem». A prevention which consists in «convincing people to modify their sexual behaviour, main responsible of the infection spread».
The use of condom, for this reason, should be only an instrument of “containment”, while the real prevention, as the transalpine expert suggests, should be “that one more radical, that is effective at all and that nobody can deny», or «the sexual abstinence for teenager before the marriage and spouse chastity in the marriage». Here we go again, the old same refrain: «This is the prevention model ― Suaudeau concluded ― that Church want to use. It isn’t a simple model, to be sure, ma it is something totally human, based on faith and hope, and not on a latex material to distribute… A mistake was done dedicating all the efforts to the Hiv/Aids “containment”; using a mechanical barrier that is unworthy of the human sexuality and of the man».
The opening signs
Premise: the Church makes daily a noble work in the underdeveloped nations. In the farthest corners of Africa and South America there are clergy men and nuns that offers assistance to sick and malnourished people, risking very often their life personally. In short the Catholic missions are a model of charity and compassion. It is not equally true that the Vatican ostracism on condoms cost too much lives in those planet zones? It is the answer that, from a long time, many people put, within the ecclesiastic hierarchy too.
The first dissenting voices
The internal pressures began in 1989, when the French pralates express themselves in favour of condom in the fight against Aids. But the case explodes in 1995 with the dismissal of Jacques Gaillot, bishop of Evreux, guilty to “sing outside the chorus”, supporting openly the contraceptives cause. The sign of infamy impressed like this on condom and on his authoritative supporter since the period of Karol Wojtyla doesn’t stop the march of Catholics over the Alps, that in 1996 return to charge. How? With an official document by their Episcopal conference, signed by the bishop of Poiters, Albert Rouet, that on matter of condom claims: «Use it to defend yourself from Aids too».
Four years are gone (may 2000) and a new voice outside the chorus rises from the other side of the world. It is that of Patrick Dunn, bishop of the New Zealander city of Auckland, who declares that «young people should use condom if they don’t succeed to remain chaste». In this way the principle of the “smaller trouble”, ruled by the Church with reference to all the cases where an individual is not able to remain on the right way, and now applied to the condom theme, become topical again. In other words they represent an acceptable alternative in case we decide (mistaking) to renounce to chastity.
In fact Monsignor Dunn adds: «If people want to behave as they want, I suggest them to be prudent and to use all the precautions of the case. I’m not talking about the physical risks, but about the psychological and moral ones in case of unwelcome pregnancies». Strong words, that the Vatican spokesmen prefer not to comment, limiting themselves to observe: «Any bishop is responsible of his diocese. If his opinion is not in line with the opinion of the Saint See, he will have to answer about it».
We are always in 2000, but in November, when Monsignor Maurice Piat, bishop of Port Louis (Mauritius Island) writes a pastoral letter where we can read: «In the prevention campaigns against Aids the Church doesn’t recommend the use of condom as an instrument of fight…By the way, when a person decides to breaks out the moral law in the sexual or love field, the Church doesn’t oppose itself on the use of methods to avoid the infection or the transmission of a mortal virus during a sexual intercourse. But this person, for this reason, isn’t let off to ask himself about the morality of his behaviour and on the “dehumanizing” nature of his sexual life».
The Belgian bishop and the Ciad episcopate
Let’s make a jump of four years again to report a conversing voice of the ecclesial outline coming from Belgium. It’s Godfried Danneels, cardinal of Bruxelles, who in January 2004 declares to the Dutch television: «Take precautions from infection or from death is an act of prevention and, morally, it is different from the use of condom as means to reduce the birth number». That is to say that, in case of a sexual intercourse with a seropositive person, condom should used not to add the commission of impure acts a sin equally serious as «to disobey to commandment that condemns homicide». A concept that Danneels reasserts in 2006 during an interview to the daily paper of his country La derniere Heure: «If a man infected by Aids obliges a woman to have sexual intercourses, she must be able to impose condom, otherwise the homicide sin is added».
But an opening sign arrived in written form in 2002, thanks to a text signed from the whole Ciad episcopacy, where we can read: “The use of condom is undergone to the normal moral rules, therefore as the other human actions are. The last moral rule is the conscience. Everybody should have the aim of forming their conscience and practising their own responsibility in the situations they live. Since nobody can make the impossible, we can’t demand to spouses to renounce to sexual intercourses. We understand, then, that a person
for duty of love, can be induced to use condom to protect himself or to protect his spouse”.
The Spanish Church and Wojtyla’s theologian
By now the breach is made and, in January 2005, it’s the turn of the Spanish Church to inflict the nth shoulder charge to the system. In front of the data that reveals the presence of a good 125000 carriers of the Hiv virus in the Iberian country, the secretary of the Episcopal Conference, Juan Antonio Martinez Camino, announce the adhesion to the so-called Abc strategy (Abstinence, Being faithful, Condom use) admitting that «condoms carry out an important role in the integral and global prevention of the Aids», and moralizing: «I say yes to condom if it used as last option». Troublesome affirmation, that costs to Martinez Camino, as previously happened to the representatives of the Episcopal conferences of France, USA, Brazil, an exemplar ticking off by the Vatican.
Inside the Papal State too, however, it begins to be manifest a certain attitude in favour of compromise in matter of condoms. In January 2005 the cardinal Gorge Cottier, authoritative theologian of Pope Wojtyla, released to the press agency Apcom an interview where legitimates in fact the use of condom, even if delimiting for the emergency cases caused by the Aids epidemic in determined geographic areas: «In particular situations, and I’m thinking of those place where a lot of drug circulates, where exists a wide human promiscuity and where this promiscuity is associated to a big poverty, for example in the zone of Africa and Asia, where people are prisoners of this condition, here that in this case the use of condom can be considered legitimate».
The reasons of this legitimacy are two, according with the theologian cardinal: «The first is that, in the described conditions, in front of an imminent risk of infection, it is difficult to undertakes the normal way to contrast the pandemic, that is to say the education to the sacredness of the human body. The second regards the very nature of this terrible disease. The virus is transmitted through a sexual intercourse; and so, together with life, there is a risk to transmit death too. And it is at this point that is important the commandment “don’t kill”». A speech that traces, as we can see, that done a year before by monsignor Danneels.
The lacked Pope and the English archbishop
The umpteenth stone in the pool is thrown even Carlo Maria Martini, the cardinal that, after the death of John Paul II, would have been supported by the “opponents” of Joseph Ratzinger in favour of the election of a more modern Pope. It’s the 27 April 2006 when the weekly magazine L’espresso publishes a declaration of the high prelate, took by his Dialogue about life with the scientist and bioethical expert Ignazio Marino. The words of Martini, together with the annual data on Aids spread, will convince then Benedict XVI to establish a commission for the drawing up of the famous dossier about condom, today examined by the Congregation for the doctrine of the Faith.
In his speech the cardinal recalls explicitly the already mentioned principle of condom as “Smaller trouble”. Here the more meaningful passage: «It is necessary to do everything is possible to face the Aids. Certainly the use of condom can constitute, in some cases, the smaller trouble. Then there is the particular situations of the spouses, one of them is infected by Aids. This one is obliged to protect the other partner who must can protect himself. But the question is rather if it is better that the religious authorities promote this mean of defence, almost thinking that the other means, morally sustainable, included the abstinence, putting them in the background, while there is the risk to promote an irresponsible behaviour. Other is, therefore, the principle of the smaller trouble, applicable in all the cases arranged from the different local situations will allow to everyone to contribute effectively to the fight against Aids, without favouring the not responsible behaviours».
Also with all the clarifications of the case, the endorsement of condom by Martini produced a considerable shake-up in the ecclesiastic surroundings. The evidence of this change is that even an unshakeable traditionalist as Cormac Murphy O’Connor, archbishop of Westminster, lately opened to the use of condom to prevent the Aids infection. And to think that, until few months ago, the English prelate debated with the ex Prime Minister Tony Blair, who accused the Church of hypocrisy about condoms. The lack of antiretroviral drugs and the few dedication of the rich countries in rendering the cures universally disposables were the only causes of the Aids epidemic for Murphy O’Connor, who twists the argument: «A flood of condom in the African dioceses will give only more promiscuity and more Aids». And then the same old refrain: «To defeat the virus it is necessary a change in the behaviour and in the monogamous relationships between man and woman».
A revolutionary: Kevin Dowling
A different chapter is deserved by Monsignor Kevin Dowling, bishop of the South African diocese of Rustenburg. Already in 2001, during the Conference of the United Nations for Aids, this brave man reveal to a journalist of a Catholic agency his assent for the use of condom for the couples in which one between the partners is seropositive. His opinion finds the help of the then archbishop of Durban, Denis Hurley (died in 2004), but it costs the reproach of the apostolic nuncio in South Africa and of the Episcopal Conference too, that remind him what is the official position on the Saint See.
Dowling seems to be indifferent to this reproach and, in June 2006, comes out. «The use of condom – he asserts – has been always considered an argument of sexual morality. My experience in the field suggests me that it is rather a question of justice and ethics, of right to the life, of protection of life. We are called to offer a more comprehensive approach, a theology which carries people to meet God in the middle of their difficult situations». This, on the contrary, was his comment the next day of the declaration of the bishop Martini: «I’m so glad that high personalities of the ecclesial hierarchy started to create a debate climate. The Church should reconsider its traditional position on the prohibition of the use of condom for the couples where one partner is seropositive or in the case of young women subject of every kind of abuses».
Of course, women. They convinced the South African bishop that, in the territory of his diocese al least, it can’t go on like before. He confirms it in an interview published the last 7 April from the Canadian daily newspaper The Globe and Mail: «I have women at heart. I’m on their side… There are so many women here with a painful history on their shoulders». Monsignor Dowling listens to all these women and does what he think be better; the thing that no Catholic of his range had never dared to make before: distributes condoms. A chancy initiative for “the bishop of Aids” (as he is called by the people in the south of Africa), almost a challenge with the Vatican, that however doesn’t ask his resignation. Maybe because in Rome they don’t think that doesn’t be worth the effort to attract the attention on a rebel priest («I’m a small fish, only the bishop of a rural diocese down the Africa», says him). But in Rome they also know that the problem can’t be resolved simply smashing that rebel.
Cornered by his Church, that reproaches him every now and then through the apostolic nuncio, Dowling go straight on his way («Until they leave me to do this…»), convinced that not all the traditional dictates of faith can find an application in a place like Africa. «The abstinence before the marriage and the fidelity in the marriage – he explains – are beyond the possible in here. The real problem is to protect life. This must be our main objective. And to deny the use of condom to million of Catholic that live in the areas of the south and the east of Africa devastated by Aids means to infringe the message of the Church in favour of life».
The Catholic campaign in favour of a “free choice”
The effort in favour of condoms earned monsignor Dowling the approval by lots of clerics and lays, that submerged him with letters to show him their moral support. Hundreds of these messages started, in occasion of the World Aids Day 2002, from the supporters of Condoms4life, campaign of Catholic inspiration which denounces “the devastating effects produced by the bishop veto about condoms” (as is written on www.condoms4life.org, official site of the initiative).
The campaign Condoms4life is sponsored by Catholics for a Free Choice (Cffc), American not governmental organization which does consulting activity for the Economic and Social Council (Ecosoc) of the United Nations. Its aim is to encourage “the moral capability of women and men to take right decision on their own life”, infusing these values “in the public politics, in the community life, in the feminist analysis, in thought and in the Catholic teaching” (took by the site www.catholicsforchoice.org).
In conclusion, the Aids tragedy is moving the consciences of the Catholic world as on the level of the ecclesial hierarchy as on the level of simple believers. We of Comodo.it like to end with these words between irony and provocation: «If I was Pope, I would open a condom factory in the Vatican. What’s the sense of sending food and medicine if after that we leave that people infected himself and die?». This words come from a Brazilian priest who has in his office a condom inside a picture hanged on the wall and on it there is the writing: “in case of emergency, brake the glass”.
|
